§ Mr. STEWARTasked the President of the Board of Trade whether the Reparation Claims Department of the Board of Trade has refrained from issuing forms specially adapted for stating claims by mercantile marine masters, officers, and seamen interned in Germany during the War for wages during internment, and for solatium for privations, indignities, and sufferings apart from physical injury, because that Department has been advised that such internment was within the rights of Germany as a belligerent, notwithstanding the terms of Articles 5 and 6 of The Hague Convention of 1907, No. 11, which was ratified by both Great Britain and Germany, and which 49W provided for the release of the masters, officers and crews of merchant ships on their giving an undertaking in writing not, to engage, while hostilities should last in any service connected with the operations of the War?
§ Sir R. HORNESpecial forms to meet the particular classes of damage to officers and seamen of the mercantile marine which are referred to in the question have not been issued. Forms have been issued by the Reparation Claims Department suited to the different classes of damage specified in the reparation part of the Treaty of Versailles. These forms are subject to such alterations as the circumstances of any particular case may require, and it is open to any person in filling up the form to include particulars of loss of wages if he so desires. The Reparation Claims Department is advised, however, that internment, unaccompanied by acts of cruelty, violence, of maltreatment, or loss of wages due to internment, does not give rise to a claim against Germany for reparation under the terms of the Treaty, and it is therefore unnecessary to issue a special form designed to meet a claim of damage in respect of which it does not appear that compensation can competently be claimed